Aerospace parts manufacturing

It all started with a call to the Production Director of a company that manufactures parts for the aerospace industry. As Eurotherm Service Manager UK & Ireland, Param Chana describes it, , “I called him and told him I wanted to show him our exciting new tech”. So off he went with his demonstration tablet in hand, ready to show how our eCAT on-site calibration tool works with our calibration and accreditation management solution EOS (Eurotherm Online Service) Advisor. During the demo the customer called in his Production Supervisor, Manager and Quality Manager and a very exciting meeting ensued.

“It’s a totally transparent system that gives us the confidence we are getting it right.”
- Production Director, Aerospace Parts Manufacturer

The Problem

It turned out that they were not happy with the company who were carrying out the calibration of their equipment. They had recently made mistakes on some aspects of the onsite calibration and also the calibration certification process took a long time and needed a lot of administration.

During calibration, the data was written on paper, typed into a digital document, printed on paper, and then sent to the customer, taking a week to turn-around and leaving a lot of room for human error.

The Solution

Our eCAT software is an App installed on a tablet carried by our trained calibration engineers. On site, they simply enter the calibration data straight into the software and upload it to EOS Advisor, so the customer has the calibration certificate before the engineer even leaves the site. They can then access it anytime from anywhere for audit purposes, in the quality manager’s word’s “just click-and it’s there!”

A further benefit was that in the past, the equipment had to be called out of the system to carry out the calibration, causing some downtime in the manufacturing process. The new system turns the calibration process upside-down, so ownership of the calibration can lie with the people using the equipment.

The Value

The client realised they were not getting value for money from their calibration contractor and felt that there was more value in the Eurotherm offering because it is “a totally transparent system that gives us the confidence we are getting it right.”

They saw the eCAT application at work and EOS Advisor open-book approach to calibration planning, scheduling and management as an improvement investment, and the order was placed without delay.

Alongside the order for EOS Advisor, came a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for an engineering project to improve their overall process, telephone support, bonded spares, and an agreement to upgrade all of their controllers to Eurotherm for precision control of their processes in a stepped 3-year plan.